The house sat empty fourteen years
A wasted crystal chandelier
The lungs still howled a breathless air
And corporate dust of laughing lairs
He checked them in, the straw and clay
Of ninety years of day by day
Was my street sane? An image of
The spark that stirs within them

I was fourteen, they bought the home
Just old enough to stay alone
The biggest chair, the smoky skin
I sat like so and threw it in
The floors that creak, the pipes that pound
And underneath, one other sound
An angry hum; a low heart rate
That made me fear the stairs of

The void that's crowded with their fears
Spills out into the present years
Her tears upon the child at night
And we say swift the daylight time
Each year I grow, each day I think
Of when I felt the breath of wings
Above my chair, around my neck
It wanted to devour me